Video: Automating teeth whitening with actions

Now that we've learned how to use this powerful technique, which will help us to whiten the teeth in our photographs, here I want to share with you how you can record and create a custom action, which will help you speed up your overall teeth whitening workflow. Well, the first thing that we need to do in order to create an action is we need to click on this little play button icon here in order to open up our Actions panel. Next we will click on the icon for creating a new set. Let's go ahead and name this our initials, dash, Actions. Then we will click OK.

In this course, photographer, author, and teacher Chris Orwig details the tools every photographer needs to retouch portraits to make them look their best while remaining authentic. The course includes an overview of the retouching process and how to develop a plan for a retouching project.

After exploring techniques to improve the overall photo, Chris shares his techniques for reducing wrinkles, enhancing eyes and other facial features, improving hair, and retouching makeup. The course concludes with a look at retouching skin and reshaping portions of a portrait using transformations, the Warp tool, and the Liquify filter.

Automating teeth whitening with actions

Now that we've learned how to use this powerful technique, which will help us towhiten the teeth in our photographs, here I want to share with you how you canrecord and create a custom action, which will help you speed up your overallteeth whitening workflow.Well, the first thing that we need to do in order to create an action is weneed to click on this little play button icon here in order to open up our Actions panel.Next we will click on the icon for creating a new set.Let's go ahead and name this our initials, dash, Actions.Then we will click OK.

The next step is to click on the New icon.This will open up our New Action dialog, and here we are going to name this newaction Teeth Whitening.In this action, we are going to record the same steps that we took in the lastmovie, except these are going to be a little bit more broad or general, so thatwe can then apply them to other photographs as well.Well, the first step, as you recall, is to click on the icon for a Hue/Saturation adjustment.Next you use the Targeted Adjustment tool to sample or click on the yellow in the teeth.

Then you desaturate those yellows, and brighten up the Lightness a little.Then in this layer, you also go to the Master channel, and here just bring up theoverall Lightness as well.Well, in the previous movie, at this stage, we inverted the mask, and started topaint this adjustment into the teeth.Here we aren't going to do that.Rather, we are going to jump straight to duplicating this layer a few times, andthen changing the blending modes and the opacity of those two layers.On a Mac press Command+J once; on Windows press Control+J. Then change this layerblending mode to Screen.

You may remember that the Screen Opacity amount was really low.It was around 10 or 15%, or so.Next, copy this layer again, press Command+J on a Mac; Control+J on Windows.On the top layer, change your blending mode to Soft Light.As you may remember, with that layer, our Opacity, well, it was up close to about 50% approximately.The next thing I want you to do is to group all of these layers together, so thatwe can then apply a mask to the entire group of adjustments.

Click in the top adjustment, hold down the Shift key, then click in the bottom.Here we will press Command+G on a Mac, or Control+G on Windows. Think G for group.Next let's name this.Go ahead and name this teeth whitening.Here what we want to do is then add a mask to the entire group, yet we want amask which is filled with black.So if you hold down the Option key on a Mac, and Alt key on Windows, and thenclick on the Add layer mask, it will create a mask for this group, concealing allof those adjustments.

Now at this point, we have recorded the action which builds all of thefoundational elements of the teeth whitening technique.So here we need to go back to our Actions panel, and then click Stop.In doing this, we've created for ourselves an incredibly valuable resource, andlet me show you why.Well, here I am going to go ahead and delete all of these layers which I've justcreated, in order to record that action.And let's say that we open up a photograph like this one here, and we realize,gosh, we need to whiten the teeth.

Well now, rather than having to go through all of those steps which we learnedin the previous movie, all that we need to do is we need to just click on thename of the action, and then press Play.Photoshop will then build all of those layers for us.Next, because there's a mask on this group, we can then simply select our Brushtool, choose white as our color there, and then just paint away the yellow.In other words, in doing this, we can really speed up this workflow, because thisaction will give us access to all of the settings here, these blending modes,and all that we've done there.

They're all inside of that group.As we make these adjustments, if we realize, gosh, we didn't really removeenough yellow based on this photograph, or the shade of the yellow in this person's teeth,well, just open up your group, go to that layer, click on the icon for Hue/Saturation, and in the Yellows channel here we can then control that. We can dial that in.We could also dial in the brightening effect by going to the layer where we havethe Screen blending mode.We could increase or decrease that, and then of course, the same thing withthat Soft Light layer.

Now last, but not least with this technique, you want to click in your mask layerhere, the mask for the group, and just increase the Feather amount.That will soften the edges for this adjustment.Here with this adjustment, if we click on the eye icon, you can see our before,and then now our after. Very effective; very nice teeth whitening.I also want to point out that I've included this action inside of this chapter'sfolder in our Exercise Files folder.So if you have access to those exercise files, you can always just use that actionthat I've created for you.

If you don't, as you can see here this movie, you can just record your ownaction. And either way, what I hope that you do is that you use this action inorder to speed up your workflow when it comes to teeth whitening.

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Learn by watching, listening, and doing, Exercise files are the same files the author uses in the course, so you can download them and follow along Premium memberships include access to all exercise files in the library.

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Learn by watching, listening, and doing! Exercise files are the same files the author uses in the course, so you can download them and follow along. Exercise files are available with all Premium memberships.
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